50 Facts About Felines for National Cat Day: Around 3.4 million cats enter shelters each year, and only 37 percent of them find forever homes. That’s why animal welfare advocates marked October 29th as National Cat Day, an annual day of awareness to promote feline adoption. This Saturday, celebrate Felis silvestris in all its furry glory by brushing up on the 50 bits of trivia below.

I got started rereading Alistair MacLean and had so much fun I couldn't stop. This was at least the third time I've read The Black Shrike and the second for Where Eagles Dare and Ice Station Zebra. Probably the third for Fear Is the Key. It's my opinion that when MacLean was on top of his game, as he was in these books, nobody was better at writing adventure novels with mystery elements and plot twists galore. There are enough twists in these two books to put a pretzel factory to shame.The Black Shrike was orginally published in England as Dark Crusader by Ian Stuart. The Stuart name was kept on its original publication under the new title, but soon MacLean was so famous that his real name was put on the cover. When eight scientists disappear, along with their wives, after answering a classified ad, British agent John Bentall is sent in answer to the ninth ad, along with Mary Hopewell, an agent posing as his wife. Following swiftly are kidnapping, escape, and rescue. Or is all what it seems to be? Of course it isn't. It never is in a MacLean novel, but you'll never guess what's really going on unless somebody (like me) mentions it. Adventures and skullduggery follow, with plenty of clues if you're alert. But no matter how alert you are, you'll never guess the ending. Well, I didn't.I didn't guess the ending of Where Eagles Dare, either, even though [HUGE SPOILER ALERT] it's the same ending as in The Black Shrike [END OF HUGE SPOILER ALERT]. In this one, British agent John Smith leads a hastily assembled [PARENTHETICAL SPOILERS FOLLOW] (or is it?) band of agents to rescue a British general (or is he?) from an impregnable (ha!) castle fortress [END OF PARENTHETICAL SPOILERS]. Double agents abound. There's even a triple agent. Extreme cold and many heroic adventures ensue. Just read it. It's even better than the movie.Fear Is the Key is set in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The plot is so wildly preposterous that I'm not even going to try to cover it. It has wild chases, a hurricane sweeping over an oil rig in the Gulf, more chases, and more twists than even the usual MacLean book. Great stuff, one of my favorites of his work.Ice Station Zebra is an English country house mystery set on a nuclear submarine. You probably think I'm joking, and I am. A little. It really is an adventure novel, but it's also a mystery with a (mostly) closed setting, and there's even a gathering of the suspects so that the villain can be exposed at the end. As with all of MacLean's books, the setting is quite important and is described minutely. I don't know how much MacLean faked things, but in all his books I'm absolutely convinced by the details. MacLean does cold weather better than just about anyone, and this book is a fine example, as is Where Eagles Dare. My cold-weather favorite, though, is Night without End, which I should also reread soon.If you're looking for depth of character, look elsewhere. MacLean's heroes are stalwart men (often named John; in fact several of these books have at least two characters with that name), able to bear punishments and wounds that would put anyone else in intensive care. They're witty in moments of stress that would require a double dose of Valium for anyone else. They don't need sleep. They're competent in everything they do, unless MacLean needs for them to make a slip. They're always the smartest person in the room, unless MacLean needs for them to make mistakes that cost the lives of others, as happens in several books. And they never, ever let you in on a tenth of what they know, although they keep hinting at how much more there is to what's going on than they're telling. Anyway, if you're looking for sheer fun, which is what pleasure reading is all about, you can't go wrong with the early works of MacLean. Later on he wrote books sadly unworthy of his legacy, but for a while he was as good as it gets.For other MacLean reviews, here are my comments on The Satan Bug, Puppet on a Chain, and South by Java Head.

'Alien Megastructure' Star Targeted by $100 Million SETI Search: "I don't think it's very likely — a one-in-a-billion chance or something like that — but nevertheless, we're going to check it out," Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at Berkeley SETI, said in the same statement. "But I think that E.T., if it's ever discovered, it might be something like that. It'll be some bizarre thing that somebody finds by accident … that nobody expected, and then we look more carefully and we say, 'Hey, that's a civilization.'"

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Deadline: Michael Massee, known for roles in The Amazing Spider-Man film series and whose name was, unfortunately, inextricably linked to the tragic accident that killed Brandon Lee during the filming of the 1994 film The Crow, died October 26 from undisclosed causes. He was 61. The news was first announced by French actor Anthony Delon, Massee’s fellow cast member on the 2014 French series Interventions.

Having decided that the goobers at Google are indeed lying swine, I've made a start at reconstituting the links list. It's back on the right. I've probably forgotten a few that should be there, maybe your very favorite. Let me know what's missing, and I'll add it.

With Six Scarlet Scorpions (try saying that six times fast) Will Murray begins "The Wild Adventures of Pat Savage," Doc Savage's cousin and a fan favorite from her appearances in Doc's own adventures.In her opening adventure (based, as I understand it, on an outline Lester Dent did for an unpublished adventure novel), Pat, who wants to get rich, is in Oklahoma with the purpose of buying oil leases. Her partner in this venture is Monk Mayfair, and they're not in Oklahoma long before they're in a plane crash, which is the least of their worries as they're soon tangled in the machinations of the Scarlet Scorpion, a hooded villain who's out to take over the state by means of extorting money to provide the cure to a mysterious paralyzing disease that he's causing. Pat and Monk are framed for the murder of a cop, so they're being chased all over Oklahoma by the good guys and the bad guys, and sometimes it becomes hard to tell just who's one and who's the other, with the mysterious Scarlet Scorpion always floating in the background.This book reminded me a lot of the old movie serials with its hooded villain and its many cliffhangers. Lots of gunplay and explosions and huge fires and escapes and pursuits, just the kind of thing to liven up a Saturday afternoon, or any afternoon, for that matter. Pat Savage is more than up to the job of holding her own in any situation, even though she doesn't have the abilities of her famous cousin. This new series is off to a humdinger of a start.

The folks at Google said it would take "a few days" to restore the links that used to reside happily at the right of my blog. It's been a lot more than a few days since the links disappeared. More like a month. Some people now suspect that Google never intended to restore the links, which seem to have been removed during some kind of "improvement" to blogger. Some people think that some lying swine just threw out the "a few days" timeline to keep people quiet for a while in the hopes that everyone would just forget that the links had gone missing in the first place. I know of at least one blog on which the links have reappeared. I know of many others on which they haven't. So I'll start gathering some links and try to get some of them back where they belong. However, there were a lot of links, and I don't remember all of them. You can let me know if there are any you'd especially like to see, and I'll get those on the list. In a few days.

Veteran Simpsons Writer, Producer Dies: (NEWSER) – Kevin Curran might not have been a household name, but there were few Americans he didn't get a laugh out of during a decades-long career in TV comedy writing and producing. Curran, a six-time Emmy winner who has died from complications from cancer at the age of 59, joined the producing team of The Simpsons in 2001 and wrote a dozen episodes, Deadline reports. He won three of his Emmys with The Simpsons and three with Late Night With David Letterman, where he was part of the writing team from 1985 to 1987, reports Variety. He came up with the show's first Top Ten list: "'Top Ten Words That Almost Rhyme with ‘Peas.'" Hat tip to Deb.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Season of Ice: Richard Prosch: 9781539033424: Amazon.com: Books -- From the 1965 east-coast blackout to depression-era Nebraska; from the trash-piled streets of Manhattan to rural-South Carolina; here are 17 stories of innocent criminals, guilty bystanders, mob hit men, dead farm girls, and small-town cops. Justice is brutal. Long dead secrets won't stay in the grave. And just about everybody has something real to fear. New tales of crime and suspense join Prosch fan favorites to keep you turning pages well past midnight.

All Things About “Althing” by Stephen P. Kelner, Jr. | Trace Evidence: Massachusetts-based writer Stephen P. Kelner, Jr. is a management consultant and the author of Motivate Your Writing! (UPNE). His fiction appears in the Level Best anthology Undertow, featuring stories by New England crime writers. Here he talks about the history behind his story “Death at the Althing” from the November issue.

Atlas Obscura: The Futuro House, in all its space age retro splendor, is like a physical manifestation of 1960s optimism. Shaped like the Hollywood idea of a flying saucer, the Futuro is a plastic, prefabricated, portable vacation home built to easily adapt to any climate or terrain, from mountain slopes to the seaside. After enjoying a heyday in the late '60s and early '70s, the remaining Futuros are now scattered across all parts of the globe, from the Australian beaches to the mountains of Russia, like secluded relics of midcentury technoutopianism.

Who Done It?is Abbott and Costello's take on the B-mystery. My favorite part about it is the setting: a radio studio. I like Old Time Radio, and there's a good bit of stuff here that appeals to me. Another thing that appeals: No musical numbers. This one's straight comedy all the way.Bud and Lou are hapless soda jerks who want to be radio writers. When a man is killed on the air, they become hapless investigators in an attempt to solve the crime and get jobs as writers. The cops are not amused.Lots of burlesque routines are used, and the guys are right on the timing, as ever. There's a joking bit where they tune in a radio and hear "Who's on First," and they don't like it. Considering that it's a lot better than the "Watts and Volts" routine from earlier in the movie, that's hard to believe. If you like pratfalls and slapstick, the movie's full of those, just one thing after another. Fans of Bud and Lou will be happy. If you're not a fan, though, you won't be happy.Great cast in this one, including William Gargan, William Bendix, and Mary Wickes. Some nicely effective B&W photography, too. Not the best of the Abbott and Costello movies, but it's right up there.

Locus Online News: Author Sheri S. Tepper, 87, died October 22, 2016. Tepper was a prolific author of SF, best known for her feminist and ecological themes, with major titles including The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) and Grass (1989).

'Dead or Alive' singer Pete Burns, proto-Goth icon of the '80s, dies: Pete Burns, the vivacious and androgynous frontman for British pop and New Wave band Dead or Alive, died Sunday from cardiac arrest, his management confirmed Monday. He was 57.
Dead or Alive's biggest hit was also its first -- "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" -- which charted around the world and peaked at No. 11 in the U.S. in 1985. The band, known as much for its proto-Goth style as its music, had a handful of lesser hits including "Brand New Lover" and "Something in My House."

Early voting opened in Texas today, so I voted. I can now sit back, relax, and see how things turn out. The line inside the building (the local branch library) was as long as the line outside. I was told that the poll workers were shorthanded, not a good thing for opening day. But I was patient. My civic duty is done for the day.

Pop music icon Bobby Vee dead at 73: Pop music legend Bobby Vee — an icon for music fans around the world, and a champion for charitable causes around Central Minnesota — died early Monday morning of complications of Alzheimer's disease. He was 73. Hat tip to Steve Stilwell.

It's Official: Marlowe Listed as Shakespeare's Co-Author: (NEWSER) – "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," wrote William Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part II—or was it Christopher Marlowe? After more than 400 years, Marlowe has been given joint credit for all three of the Henry VI plays long thought to have been the work of Shakespeare alone, the Telegraph reports. Marlowe gets the credit in the upcoming New Oxford Shakespeare collection of Shakespeare's works. For the first new edition of the collection in 30 years, an international team of scholars worked to identify co-authors of Shakespeare works. The collection also includes works that Shakespeare has been declared the co-author of for the first time, like Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Hat tip to Deb.

The New York Times: Tom Hayden, who burst out of the 1960s counterculture as a radical leader of America’s civil rights and antiwar movements, but rocked the boat more gently later in life with a progressive political agenda as an author and California state legislator, died on Sunday. He was 76. Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Daily Mail Online: After a year-long battle with ovarian cancer, Cecilia Hart has died.
The 68-year-old actress passed away on Sunday with her death confirmed by the local Connecticut paper WestportNow.
Cecilia was married to James Earl Jones for 34 years and shared one son, Flynn. Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.